Review: 'Shark' by Will Self

Will Self's unconventional but rewarding new novel, "Shark," was in part influenced by the film "Jaws."

Will Self's unconventional but rewarding new novel, "Shark," was in part influenced by the film "Jaws." (By Polly Borland, image distributed by Grove Atlantic)

Carol Memmott

Part "Finnegans Wake," part "Jaws," all Will Self: "Shark" will cause a reading frenzy

Last August, British author Will Self wrote in the Guardian that his new novel, "Shark," was in part influenced by the classic Spielberg film "Jaws." "I had begun by thinking I would write 'Jaws' without the shark," Self wrote. "I ended up by writing 'Shark' with quite a lot of 'Jaws.'" Welcome to Self's confusing but wondrous world.

If you've never read Self's work — his 2012 novel "Umbrella" was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize — be forewarned he makes readers work very hard. The daunting "Shark" begins in the middle of a sentence, but it's best to dive right in. You will be tossed about in the roiling ocean of words that make up the stream-of-consciousness narrative Self favors. Nontraditional sentence structures and herky-jerky time jumps will force you to lose all sense of direction. You'll feel like you're drowning in a sea of tumbling words. Persistence, however, results in a gratifying experience, and the riptide force of Self's postmodern brilliance will suck you in.

"candle to light you to — Kerr-wangg! Here comes a chopper- Kerrwangggungggunggg!" are the opening words. Carry on and you'll bob through 466 pages unimpeded by the demarcation of chapters or paragraphs. Ellipses and dashes are Self's preferred punctuation. The novel is one big run-on sentence with no quotation marks to separate dialogue from narrative, no beginning and no decisive end. That's a nod to James Joyce, whose "Finnegans Wake" — another challenging work of fiction — also begins in the middle of a sentence and ends the same way, its final words circling back to those on the first page.

"Shark" is a novel that demands patience and a willingness to embrace the initial discomfort of an entirely different reading experience. Self counts Lewis Carroll among his influences, and "Shark" is as trippy and fanciful as falling down a rabbit hole. It's Book Two in a planned trilogy, although Self, in media interviews, refers to "Shark" as a "sprequel" to "Umbrella."

Sharks, real and metaphoric, glide and charge through this novel, which mainly bounces between the 1940s and the 1970s. It centers on psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Zack Busner, protagonist in some of Self's short stories as well as three earlier novels, including "Umbrella."

Along with Busner come themes that often appear in Self's work: mental illness, mid-20th century drug culture, and the influence popular culture has on our lives. Many of Busner's patients are schizophrenic, and the novel's point of view shifts jerkily from one character's perspective to another. In "Shark," Busner has opened Concept House, a residential treatment center in London for the mentally ill. It's the 1970s and hallucinogenic drugs are a preferred treatment method.

Among the inhabitants of Concept House is Claude Evenrude. In an early scene, Busner describes himself as bobbing "up and down on Claude's choppy wordsea, its surface criss-crossed by narrative currents swirling into whirlpools of song that subside into glassily superficial doldrums of what might be anecdotage, but beneath which … fluxes and refluxes of dangerous repression coldly circulate." It's what the reader feels throughout this novel.

Evenrude survived the sinking of the USS Indianapolis in the South Pacific during World War II. Hundreds survived the Japanese torpedo attack but were killed by sharks while floating in the ocean awaiting rescue. In Spielberg's "Jaws," the shark hunter Quint (played by Robert Shaw) recounts being a survivor of a shark attack after the USS Indianapolis went down. "Jaws," in fact, pops up frequently. In one scene, Busner takes his son to see the film and ruminates on family life. They were, he thinks, "on the surface of it perfectly happy, messing about with our rubber rings and beach balls, but all the time there was a predatory dread circling us and circling us again."

I admit to becoming exhausted by "Shark" and its mind-boggling, time-toggling, directionless journey into the lives of Self's mostly unhinged characters. It's a "Sharknado" fest of swirling scenes and mashed-up dialogue that can best be described as a flash mob's communal acid trip.

But I admire any writer who pushes me out of my comfort zone — the realistic novels that Self says should be relegated to the dustbin of obsolete genres. I still prefer more linear forms of storytelling and neatly-tied-up endings. But I'll make an exception for the works of Will Self. Persistence pays off because "Shark" will stir up a reading frenzy. It turns out that sharks, even metaphoric ones, are riveting.

Carol Memmott's reviews have also appeared in USA Today and the Washington Post.